Storage

I’ve been getting pretty deep into the history of computer storage in my work on magnetic media.

Storage: the word has a vague period feel to it. Industrial. Tape farms under the fluorescents, not memory sticks on a keychain. Back and white photos of clean-cut IBM engineers in dark neckties and horn-rims.

Even the concept is increasingly awkward in a Googled world with an expectation of 24/7 wi-fi access everywhere. Storage is as retro as feeding coins into a payphone; storage is what happens when you go to the library and must wait a week for a book to be retrieved from off-site shelving; storage is what you do with the stuff you’re not taking with you when you spend a year elsewhere.

Storage: without storage there is no data.